5 years ago we spent the weekend away with our friends and family, walked down the aisle as husband and wife for the first time and danced the night away.
5 years later, we spent the weekend away as a family of four, holding strollers and tiny hands and smiling across messy tables at each other while our first dance song played over the restaurant speakers.
So much has changed and yet, so much remains the same.
5 years ago, I spent the night before our wedding doing what I do before every big event of my life…writing. I wrote my heart out that night and I’ve managed to carve out writing time around our anniversary every year since.
My writing time these days has to happen in short bursts between naps and feeds but here I am anyway, 5 years later, sitting reflecting on our weekend of celebrating, wondering how 5 years simultaneously feels like forever ago but has also flashed by in a blur. This past week I’ve watched and re-watched our wedding video, felt all the feels at the Facebook memories and come up with a couple of things I would go back and tell my newly-wed self.
Don’t let the dust settle
It’s really easy to take an “easy” marriage for granted. Sure, we get on each other’s nerves and make mistakes just as much as the next couple, but we (very thankfully) don’t have any major drama to deal with (unless you count bedtime with a determined toddler!) But all jokes aside, even easy marriages take work. Taking the time to talk through routines or habits that maybe need a bit of a shake-up and giving each other a bit of breathing space every now and then can really feel like a fresh coat of paint for a relationship.
So dust off the wedding video, dance in the kitchen, do whatever it takes to keep you laughing and remembering those newlywed feelings.
Take the time
When you’ve been together for over a decade (almost 12 years to be exact), you spend a lot of time together. We’ve taken road trips and talked until dawn, we’ve worked together and we still call each other multiple times a day. It’s easy to spend a lot of time together but it takes effort to really make time for one another. Life gets busy and date nights get postponed and notifications interrupt. As the years go, you’ll have less and less time for each other unless you truly make it intentional.
Seasons Change.
There’s a time for exotic trips and expensive dinners and carefully curated gifts. But there will also be times where an escape to the grocery store will feel like a feat and where you’ll tag team the kids to sneak off and scribble your cards to one another. We’re sold the notion that things will always be a fairytale and anything less isn’t worthy of celebrating or worse, that anything less means there’s something “wrong.” Hey, we all know I’m ALL for the fairytale moments, but learning that marriage is an ebb and flow of energy has been one of my greatest lessons so far. 5 years ago I stood and promised to love him through all the seasons of his life and although this one is definitely the craziest so far, it’s also absolutely the sweetest and I wouldn’t want to be figuring my way through it with anyone else in the world.
Focus on the fun.
On our very first date (to the drive-in), the car battery died. Strangers needed to help us jump start the car and he was going to get me home later than he promised my dad!! I stood to the side worried about the situation but he just laughed and said: “well, this is going to be an adventure.” And in my mind, I totally added: “that we will tell our kids about one day!” Life is a lot about what you make it but mostly who you make it with. I am so thankful that I get to make it with someone who is so often the silly to my serious and is my constant dose of fun for the times when I tend to get fearful.
Find joy in the ordinary.
This has pretty much become my mantra over the last couple of years and it’s slowly becoming the backbone to my brand too. Because when we really look for it, there is magic to be found in the mess and the mundane. Those seemingly ordinary, imperfect moments are the ones that often bring the most joy when we let them.
Especially as a newly-wed bride, it’s easy to wonder “what now” after all the hype and romance of the wedding day is over and your marriage begins. It’s common to feel a little down about “not having anything to look forward to any more” and I’ve had many clients tell me how surprised they were to feel lonely after their weddings because well…everyone kind of just gets on with life after your weekend of wedding celebrations. But like I tell my brides, just make sure you keep looking at your new normal “ordinary” married life because that’s where the magic is at!
Finding the joy in the ordinary for me is in the sweet cups of tea in the morning and snuggles on the couch each night (even if it’s during TV shows we don’t always agree on). It’s the full tank of gas on a Monday morning that makes my week start off on a smoother note. It’s smiling at how he sings his favourite line of a song over and over (even though it drives me a little crazy!) It’s doing the laundry because he totally does most of the cooking. It’s dividing chores equally but always splitting the sweet stuff so I get the bigger piece. It’s embracing the imperfect and choosing it as our own version of perfect anyway, today, tomorrow and every day we’re lucky enough to get the chance.
Happy 5th Anniversary my love! I hope I get to sit down and reflect and write my heart out at least 55 more times!
xx
